Hannah Montana: Secret Identity
by Thor2000
Summary: Miley worries that Jesse Samms has learned her secret identity as Hannah Montana, but he hasn't. This is a sequel to Hannah Montana: Opportunity.
1. Chapter 1

Miley Stewart was not crazy at about Jesse Samms. She didn't hate him, but he annoyed her a little bit. He was from her native Nashville, but he was the biggest entrepreneur she had ever met. He sold term papers and book reports carefully crafted with typos and variant sentences to throw off teachers, he sold marked down school supplies at a profit retrieved from moved students or rescued from the wastebaskets and most annoyingly, he sold bootleg musical merchandise from Jessica Simpson t-shirts, Aly and AJ binders, Kelly Clarkson CDs and Hanna Montana guitar pics and at time helped to fence the excess concert tickets outside of his mother's knowledge. Some of his merchandise came from his mother who worked for a recording executive for Capitol Records, Hanna's recording company, but whether or not she had a clue of his enterprising was something else.

Jesse meanwhile was crazy for Lily Truscott, Miley's best friend. They went through school holding hands and sneaking kisses behind potted plants when they weren't sneaking glances in the classroom. After a slew of lousy boyfriends, Lily deserved a decent guy and as opportunistic as Jesse was, he seemed like a decent guy. Over the cafeteria table, he grinned at her his steely grin and Lily beamed happily to have such a great guy in her life. Miley looked at their gushy affair, turned to Oliver on the other side of her and pretended to vomit her lunch back up. Lily heard that noise of regurgitation and looked to her best friend.

"Miley, give it a rest…"

"There's something I got to tell you…" Jesse spoke with none of that obvious Nashville accent that Miley had, but then his mother had a deeply noticeable British accent that maybe had offset it. "I had a dream about you."

"You're dreaming about me?" Lily awed at the concept. "What were we doing?"

"Well, we…." Jesse had been cut off by the ringing school bell in order to return to class.

"Saved by the bell!" Miley grabbed up her lunch bag and trash and pulled Lily along with her. Lily gave her a harsh look and broke away to look back up to Jesse.

"Look," Jesse grabbed Lily by her other hand. "I've got something special for us next Wednesday. My mom gave me extra Hannah Montana tickets and instead of selling them, I thought I'd take you to a concert. How about it?"

"Hannah Montana!!!" Lily screeched excitedly as Miley made a face and realized she was losing her best friend. She looked back to Miley and realized she'd already be at the concert with Miley. Hannah just happened to be Miley's stage persona; she divided her private identity and her public identity to preserve her privacy. At the concerts, Lily hid her identity as well to protect Hannah's secret from behind the role of a party girl named Lola Luvnagle. It was a carefully constructed façade, but as much it was to protect Miley's secret pop life, it also created a hindrance to Lily's life as well.

"Well, I…." Lily looked to Jesse with his big brown eyes looking at her and then back to her best friend who wanted her with her backstage. What to do? What to do?

"Look," Jesse made the decision for her. He held her hand as he talked to her. "I get the feeling I've been taking you away from Miley a lot. Why don't we pass up this concert and we catch Aly and AJ next week?"

"Do you mean it?"

"Yeah…"

"You are like the best boyfriend ever!!!" Lily screamed, but Miley intervened and tapped her watch to reveal they were going to be late for Mrs. Pehl's history class. She gave Jesse a quick kiss to his cheek and grabbed her books, her arm tugged away by Miley. Jesse grinned his smile toward Oliver Oaken, another of Miley's best friends often left out of their female universe. He had a girlfriend too in the form of a beauty named Becca Weller, but she was a minor up-and-coming actress in her own right trying to get discovered and was away making a low-budget film in Colorado. He missed her during these long absences, but he worried she might not be trying to be as faithful to him as he was trying to be for her.

"I guess you won't be using those tickets after all…" He walked with Jesse to their gym class and pulled out his wallet. "The usual $50?"

"Nope, I got another patsy…" Jesse held them aloft. "Thor?"

"Thanks a lot, buddy!!!" The big and hefty blonde Arkansas transplant to California slapped him on the back, took the tickets and passed Jesse three hundred dollars. He was two grades above them in school and a friend of Miley's brother, Jackson, but the naïve and honest former pig farmer loved Hannah Montana as much as his pet parrot. Oliver looked at the wad Jesse made and wished he had but a part of it.

"So…" Oliver rolled his eyes as they approached the scent of the gym locker rooms. "What's going on between you and Lily? Are you guys like just friends or boyfriend and girlfriend? You know, it's driving Miley nuts."

"I know!!!" Jesse laughed and enjoyed the concept of driving Miley nuts. He was like another brother to her plus he had no idea that she hated the fact he was profiteering from her life as Hanna Montana. He really was crazy about Lily, and the idea that their teen romance skewered her friendship with Miley was getting to be a lot of fun, but lately, this rivalry for Lily's attention was taking a life of its own.

"Oliver…" Jesse entered the Bayside High School boy's locker room and crossed over to their lockers in the far corner. "If I told you something about my relationship with Lily, could you keep it a secret?"

"A secret?" Oliver looked round the room. The class was made up mostly of freshmen, a few juniors and a solitary senior who worked as an assistant to the coach. Everyone mostly paid attention to their own friends in this class and formed their own groups except in playing basketball or football. Feeling he was keeping nothing but secrets, Oliver unlocked his gym locker and started pulling off his t-shirt to change for class.

"What kind of secret?" He wondered.

"I had a dream about Lily the other night." Jesse was already in his gym shirt.

"Huh," Oliver didn't get the big deal. "Big deal. I have dreams about people I know all the time."

"Miley was in it too."

"You dog!!!" Oliver didn't know how to accept another guy who dreamed of his both of his best friends. Jesse swatted him to keep it a secret.

"I dreamt Lily and I were at a Hannah Montana concert…." Jesse confided in him looking for an insight to the dream. "Hannah was singing and everything, and then Miley swooped in…" He paused trying to clarify. "Literally, swooped in… She was in this red and white superhero costume with a cape when she flew down out of the sky, tossed me aside and kidnapped Lily away from me."

Oliver started laughing, turned away in his gym shorts and started banging at the locker trying to control his laughter. Just picturing thin and slender Miley as a comic book superhero was hysterical to him.

"That's why I cut Miley a break to let Lily hang with her." Jesse started changing for gym class himself. "I think my conscience is bothering me for hogging Lily all the time or something." He looked at Oliver cracking up and holding his ribs in laughter. "Yeah, I know… could you imagine Miley with a secret identity?"

Oliver laughed a few seconds more then caught and realized what Jesse had said. He not only understood it, but he comprehended it. He stopped laughing and became seriously worried that he had figured out a secret and didn't know it. After all, who but Jesse Samms who constantly saw Hannah Montana pictures all the time would slowly realize that Hannah Montana was but Miley Stewart in a blonde wig?

"What was that last thing you said?" Oliver asked.

"Could you imagine Miley with a secret identity?" Jesse repeated himself.

"Miley?" Oliver scoffed at the notion as he forced a laugh. "With a secret identity? Yeah, right!!" He turned away to the corner grimacing his face into worry realizing Miley would kill them both to keep her private life out of the tabloids.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Oliver was lousy for keeping secrets, well, most of them. After gym class, he had biology with Miley and Lily with Mrs. Brubaker, and Jesse was off to his filmmaking class with Mrs. Grey, a red-haired beauty with whom the majority of the male students obsessed. Of the teachers, Mrs. Brubaker had a reputation for being tough and demanding. She gave out more demerits that any other teacher. Class time was a hard time, especially with Oliver holding a secret wrapped with a warning that someone's dual life was about to end. If Jesse Samms with his opportunist ways deciphered his dream that Miley was really Hannah Montana, it would be straight to the tabloids, and Miley's dream life would be over. When school ended for the day, Oliver confronted Miley in a hushed position in the hall with Lily and revealed the truth.

Miley's scream could be heard as far away as the chicken place ten blocks away; her feet were then off and running out of the school, toward the beach and down the wooded street to her home on the bluff.

"Daddy!!!" She charged into the house and ran up the stairs looking for her father.

Standing in the kitchen making soup, cornbread and salad for dinner, Robby Ray Stewart watched and heard his teen daughter charge into the house, storm the stairs and then listened to her footsteps searching the upstairs. A former entertainer herself, he had taken his recent absence from the business to raise his kids and serve as his daughter's manager as Hannah Montana. He looked to his son, Jackson, piling cheese, vegetables and meats on a large loaf of bread, and then looked to the ceiling above him listening to his daughter looking for him hysterical on the wrong floor of their beach house.

"Give her a minute…." He mumbled to his son.

"Daddy!!!" Miley came running down the stairs, noticed her father and veered toward him upset.

"Daddy," Miley pulled herself in to sit at the counter. "I think Jesse figured out I'm Hanna Montana. I'm doomed. He told Oliver he had a dream about my secret identity as a superhero at a Hannah Montana concert."

"You a superhero?" Jackson mugged and chortled a bit. "Yeah, I could see that - Annoying Girl!!!" He gave her a superhero name and laughed under breath prepping a large sandwich.

"Jackson," Robby looked over to his son with that parental glare. "Go find me a barrel ring."

"A barrel ring…" Jackson looked at him. "In Southern California?"

"Go do it." Robby prodded him off. Confused and perplexed, Jackson rolled his eyes wondering where he was going to find a barrel ring and collected his double-decker submarine sandwich before stepping back and then wandering out the back door. Robby took a deep breath and turned back to Miley.

"You're not in trouble yet…" He replied next to his daughter. "It sounds like he's figured out who you are unconsciously, but he hasn't figured it out consciously. His mind is still trying to unravel the imagery from the dream, but I can fix this. You get Lily over here and I'll tell you what we're going to do."

"Is this going to work?" Miley asked.

"Sweetheart…" Robby chopped carrots for the soup he was making. "I helped Uncle Luther cover up his white lightning still for twenty years, didn't I?"

"Uncle Luther had a white lightning still??"

"Whoops…." Robby caught himself. "You didn't hear that from me."

At that moment, Lily and Oliver dropped out of breath on the front landing. The run from school had taken them a bit longer than it took Miley to run it. Lily climbed over Oliver and staggered to Miley before grabbing on to her to keep standing. Miley was obviously in better shape for running a mile than these two. Gasping and fighting for breath, Lily looked into Miley's face and realized she wasn't even sweating.

"I hate you." She was upset at Miley for leaving them in the dust, but she didn't mean it.

"Lily," Robby poured the girl and Oliver lemonade to quench their insatiable thirst. "I got an idea for us to help keep Miley's secret, but you've got a part in it too."

"Will it work?" Oliver pulled himself up on the sofa to reach the lemonade Robby was handing him.

"Of course, it will work!" Robby continued back to the kitchen. "For twelve years in Ridgetop, Tennessee, I never told anyone that Uncle Earl held illegal poker games in his barn after church."

"Uncle Earl had illegal poker games in that old barn on Sundays?!" Miley learned why her father came home late from church back home with more money that he left with."

"Dang it!!!!" Robby caught himself exposing more family secrets.


	3. Chapter 3

3

There was a bit of excitement in school the next morning, and Miley, Lily and Oliver were all quite smug about it. Even the school's self-proclaimed fashion police, Amber and Ashley, briefly admired Miley, and they didn't like anyone who wasn't themselves. Miley had a new picture of Hannah Montana in her locker, but this one was her and Hannah together at the same time hugging each other with their arms over each others shoulders. It was a one of a kind. It was pretty easy to get. Robby Ray just took a camera out and had let Miley allow Lily access to the Hannah closet, an adjacent closed off bedroom converted into storing Miley's extensive Hannah wardrobe. With Lily dressed up as Hannah for a change, replete with sunglasses, Miley and Lily posed together as good friends and created a moment in time that would sour any future notion Jesse Samms might ever postulate that Miley and Hannah were ever the same person. Jackson then rushed the film to a one-hour developer and brought back the results, and the rest was going to be history.

"What do you think, Jesse?" Miley beamed at her father's plot to stick the notion into the head of Jesse or anyone else that Hannah or Miley could be one and the same. He had been looking at the picture for more than just a few seconds and suddenly had a new respect for Miley. He lightly dropped his jaw in awe and jealousy and took the picture to scrutinize it further for photo-shopping evidence, then decided in his expert opinion it was real. The shadowing was correct, their scale was perfect and he noticed nothing that resembled pixels left behind from images merged from separate images. It was Miley arm-and-arm with Hannah Montana, and they were both grinning together as if they were best friends.

"You didn't photo-shop this?"

"No!!!" Miley snatched the picture away to stick in her locker.

"It was incredible…" Oliver started speaking up frankly. "There we were in the mall, and coming out of the Popcorn Hut was Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana and Miley Stewart together, yup. Miley and Hannah in the same mall… together. Yup, there we were…."

Lily pulled Oliver's ear to get him to stop act stupid.

"I think… he gets it!!" She screeched into his ear.

"You know, Miley…" Jesse took the photo down out of Miley's locker door again. "We could make a lot of money off this."

"Jesse say what?" Miley could not believe he was still scheming.

"You know…" Jesse flapped the picture as he talked to her. "With my computer and your photo, we could photo-shop a lot of girls in your place. You shouldn't be the only with a picture of themselves with Hannah. Some girls might spend as high as fifty bucks for a picture of themselves with Hannah. You'd get forty percent of the revenue, of course."

"Oh, I'd buy one!!" Lily liked the idea!!!

"Could I get one?!" Oliver spoke up too.

"Sweet niblets!!!" Miley snatched her picture back and hung it in her locker again.

"Sorry, Miley…" Lily apologized. "But he made it sound so good."

"I'm sorry…." Jesse apologized as well. "Look, as an act of trust, I'll close your locker so no one will steal your photo. Peace?"

"That's better…" Miley watched as Jesse moved aside her contents to the side to close her locker. He then turned away to moon over Lily, forcing her to grin ear-to-ear. Miley instead turned toward Oliver with a sneaky grin of her own.

"You tricked him." Oliver whispered to him.

"Yup," Miley agreed with him. "That's one disaster averted." She pretended to wipe away fake sweat then reached to her cell phone in her purse. Happy and beaming, she watched as Jesse headed for one class and Oliver headed for another. In a few minutes, both Miley and Lily had to head off to Mr. Corelli's English class, but first she wanted to share the good news with her father.

"Hi dad…" She called him at home. "You got a minute?"

"I'm just a little busy, bud." Robby reminisced with admiration over his daughter. "I still got to put away the eleven barrel rings Jackson found."

"It worked, dad…" Miley was happy again. "Jesse saw the picture and was so totally blown away!" She squealed happily.

"I'm happy for you, bud…" Robby wondered where Jackson found the barrel rings stacked on the kitchen table.

"You are the best dad ever!" Miley signed off and switched off her cell phone. She looked to Lily happy to be her friend and they joined arm and arm for their class with Mr. Corelli. Lily was feeling a bit self-conscious for deceiving Jesse, but she'd still do anything to help Miley. Walking together arm and arm for class, they turned the corner for class little expecting what was going on behind them. In the dispersing hallway, Jesse Samms emerged from the alcove under the stairs and converged for Miley's locker for her Hannah picture. Girls all over school would pay up to twenty to fifty bucks a piece for someone who could photo-shop their bodies over Miley to stand next to Hannah. If they went to other schools, no one would know the difference and if they did, it would be after he had their money. He pulled open Miley's locker door and removed the spirit gum he had used to keep it from locking shut to him. All he had to do was copy it and get it back.

"This way I don't have to pay Miley royalties." Jesse convinced himself chuckling at his own resourcefulness. He held the photo to the light and scrutinized it again, but this time he noticed something he hadn't seen before in the light. In the photo, Hannah was wearing the same kind of necklace he had given Lily a few weeks ago. It was a simple one stone ring with an imitation diamond, but it was also the letters "J" and "L" intertwined to represent his love for Lily. He whipped out his magnifying glass to get a better look at it… and then the realization hit him.

"Holy Jupiter…" Jesse revealed a buried sci-fi fixation. "It's Lily!!" Another possible truth hit him. "Lily's Hannah Montana!!! That must have been how she got the picture!!! Wait… I've been dating Hannah Montana???!!!!" The thought overtook his brain and overwhelmed his senses. A hysterical grin possessed his face and switched off everything else going on in his brain. His legs went out and he crashed to the floor dreaming of living in her giant mansion by the swimming pool while being served sushi and shrimp by snooty servants. In the real world, Amber and Ashley walked by his body lying in the hallway and turned his condition toward their own egos.

"I told you boys still dropped to your feet!"


	4. Chapter 4

4

Wednesday night at the Los Angeles Astrodome was another loud concert with a reverb shattering across the galaxy. The week before, Kelly Clarkson had honored Hannah by singing "The Best of Both Worlds," and this week, Hannah returned the recognition by singing "A Moment Like This." Ashley Simpson and Alyson Michalka were back stage to say their hellos to Hannah, and as her alter ego, Lola Luvnagle, Lily was sure she recognized the Jonas Brothers as well. Her true identity hidden behind make-up and a bright green cartoon wig, Lily looked like she could from another planet or a reject from a kids TV show from the Disney Channel. From backstage, she danced and sang along with Miley as she played Hannah for a packed house. The reverb was a sonic hurricane with screaming fans, three story tall amplifiers and controlled fireworks going off. At the end, Hannah did her signature song again for the night, blew several kisses to her fans and waved goodbye as her band played the closing chords. The escape to her dressing room had to be quick. It was a sea of people crushing her in and Lily was often squeezed to the end, but Robby was there to catch her and squeeze her into the dressing room behind Hannah and ahead of himself. A breath of relief and Lily and Miley were back in the same room where Lily learned Miley's secret identity the year before. Craft services had left Hannah a table of food and designers left a rack of dresses ready for costume changes between acts. Lily helped herself to the shrimp and sushi as Hannah collapsed to her sofa.

"I don't know how Madonna did seventeen songs a concert…." She gasped for breath. "I can barely handle eight!"

"I think I saw Johnny Collins and Cassie Osment from our history class in the third role." Lily had a hot dog in one hand and a handful of sushi in the other. "Want one?" She offered Hannah some sushi, but her friend waved it away to drink from a water bottle. Her father was pacing back and forth as he talked on a cell phone to security. The limo was running late due to fans crowding the back exit.

"Bud…" Robby wore a fake mustache as Hannah's manager. He knelt down to her eye level on the couch "I've got some bad news for you. Jesse's here backstage."

"What?!!!" Hannah and Lily screeched in unison.

"His mother the recording executive promised him he could interview Hannah Montana for your school newspaper." Robby realized the young con was now getting on his nerves! "This boy's getting to be a busy bee under my saddle, and I ain't going to stand for it." He paused a second to catch his breath. "Look, sending him away could be bad publicity, but then, after that photo, I doubt he's going to think you're Miley, but he could recognize Lily or me. I think she ought to hide in the bathroom while I go off and check on your limo."

"Can't I just tell him I'm sick?" Hannah faked some coughs.

"I doubt even that would get rid of him." Lily stood with her arms crossed.

"Just let him in and then let him out fast!" Robby cracked the door to have Roxy to give Hannah and him a minute before sending the young con artist into the dressing room. Waving Lily into the restroom, he was soon out the back way and phoning the signal to let Jesse in the room. Shooing Lily out of sight, Hannah nervously and fretfully with anxiety prone apprehension composed herself, pulled her blonde wig on tight and looked around for her sunglasses. Where were they?! Her nerves were acting up more than that horrible walk-on she did for the "Corey in the House" TV series. Behind her, Jesse slipped through the door in his suede jacket, black Hannah shirt, blue jeans and steel-toe boots. He was suspiciously complacent for someone who had never met her before. Roxy started to come in behind him, but one of Hannah's fans snatched her hat and she was racing to go get it.

"Well, hey there…. Fan…." Hannah quickly caught herself then looked around for Lily, hoping she was smart enough not to come out. "Uh, I hope you liked the concert."

"I sure did…" Jesse was smiling knowingly. Had he figured out she was really Miley? "You were incredible." He paused. "You know, I'm from Nashville just like you."

"You are?" Hannah noticed Lily's head emergence from the small bathroom and waved her back in. By time Jesse turned round, all he saw was an empty room. In the restroom, Lily pressed her back to the wall out of sight and clutched at her bright green Lola wig and listened scared to death that he didn't come in here.

"So, you want to interview me. Let's make this fast!" She pushed Jesse hard to her sofa and popped down next to him. Groaning from the unexpected push, Jesse blinked and chuckled a bit to Hannah and reached for his recorder in his interior jacket pocket and pointed it to Hanna.

"So…" He smirked a bit connivingly. "What part of Nashville?"

"Uh…." Hanna could not tell him she was from the community of Ridgetop; that response would link her back to her life as Miley. "Oh, you know, the part near the river…"

"Where Reese Witherspoon lived?" Jesse continued smirking at her. "Did you know her?"

"No…" Hanna confessed. "She had moved on by that point. Moving along…." She tried to speed him along before her father returned and was recognized by him.

"Do you have a real name?" Jesse asked.

"Why would you ask that?" Hanna's eyes went wide.

"Oh…" Jesse smiled knowingly as she scooted away from him. "Because some stars like Sting or Cher tend to change their names or like you, Lily Trus…." He grabbed and pulled off her wig before she knew it. He stopped and realized he was wrong; Lily wasn't Hanna Montana, it was Miley!!!

"Miley?????!!!!!" He was as caught unprepared as she was. She could only screech in shock and surprise and caught the edge of her long blonde wig on her shoulder by her fingertips. Feelings of fear and shock the young pop star as she dropped her jaw prepared to scream, but just as Oliver had done when he heard the truth, Jesse stared in surprise at her for all of a second then rolled his eyes toward each other as his mind tried to comprehend the situation and he fell backward with the sound of a squeaky old gate swinging shut.

"Oh my god!!!" Lily finally came out of hiding after peeking. "He thought I was Hannah?"

"Lily," Miley hurriedly and awkwardly tried to fix her wig. "He pulled my wig off! He knows I'm Hannah. He's the worst possible person to have figured it out." She fretted too scared to think. "That creep's going to tell everyone in school!"

"Hey," Lily took offense. "That creep's my boyfriend!"

"What am I going to do?" Miley was Hannah again, wig intact but slightly obvious. "My secret is out."

"Wait a second…." Lily bent down over Jesse, pulled him up by the cuffs of his jacket and then dropped him, his head hitting the floor like a bowling ball on a stained wood floor. "Whoops!!" She stroked his head out of love. "Uhhh…. I got nothing…" She picked up his recorder to stick it in his jacket and turned upon hearing the back door of the dressing room. It was Robby Ray coming back in the back way. He closed the door behind ready to announce the limo was ready and then noticed the two girls standing over Jesse's unconscious body on the floor.

"Oh, sweet niblets, you girls killed him, didn't you" He prepared for the worse.

"He jerked my wig off!" Miley was more upset than before. "He thought Lily was Hannah Montana!!!"

"Well," Robby looked confused toward Lily rubbing Jesse's head. "I never expected that outcome!"

"What kind of magic trick do you have to fix this?!!!" Hannah was upset and screaming. "I hope it involves hypnotism cause that's the only thing that's going to work!!"

"Sweetheart…" Robby Ray had another idea. "I think I got some more tricks up my sleeve. After all, I never told Aunt Pearl that Cousin Bo drove his car into the lake while we was trying to jump it."

"Cousin Bo lost his car trying to jump Beaver Lake?"

"Dang it!!" Robby was spilling family secrets left and right. He caught his composure and looked to his daughter. "Okay, here's the plan. You two switch clothes again."

"There's more to this, I hope." Lily sat on the floor with Jesse's head in her lap as she stroked his hair.

"There sure is…" Robby replied. "As long as this time Jesse sticks to the script…."


	5. Chapter 5

For a change, Lily was the one leading the way and waving to fans as Hannah Montana with Miley as Lola in the green wig following behind her and pretending to be a groupie. It was a few quick kisses from Lily as Hannah to the crowd and she stopped to bake in the admiration as Miley became tired of her hamming it up and shoved her first into the limo. Behind them, Robby Ray was bringing up the rear with a large object in the shape of a body wrapped up in a rug. Roxy was keeping the body covered to hide any thoughts of bodies passing out at Hannah concerts. Pounding the top of the vehicle was the sign for the chauffeur to drive away to escape the fans and then reach another limo to escape and confuse the reporters in an underground garage to switch limos again and haul Jesse's unconscious body with them along the way. The usual process was then to head home, but with Jesse with them, the plan was changed for tonight. A side route to Jesse's house, Miley freaked as Jesse started waking up. Lily didn't give her enough time to get out and kicked her through the door and swung it shut behind her. For all intents and purposes with Miley outside the vehicle, it looked as if Lily dressed as Hannah Montana was alone with Jesse.

"Where am I…" Jesse started waking up and Lily took a deep breath for Miley's sake. "What happened?" He recognized Lily in the Hannah wig. "Lily?"

"You guessed my secret." She claimed with a goofy untruthful grin trying her best to be an actress for Miley's sake.

"What?" Jesse tugged off her wig. "No, no… You were Miley. I saw Miley."

"Miley as Hannah Montana?!!!" Lily scoffed at that notion. "Miley can't carry a note in a bucket!" Someone thumped the side of the limo for that offense. Jesse turned to see who it was as Lily pulled him back to her.

"I'm not Hannah either…" Lily confessed for a bigger lie. "I'm a Hannah impersonator; I get hired when the real Hannah gets sick. She got laryngitis. I lip-sync her for concerts she can't make."

"It was you in the picture with Miley?"

"No…" Lily was saying the things Robby Ray had told her to say. "I took that picture of Miley and Hannah. You can't tell anyone I'm a Hannah-impersonator. I could lose my job if you did…"

"Wait a second…" Jesse realized this scenario wasn't fitting in with what he had guessed. It all sounded logical, but then, why was the Hannah in the picture wearing Lily's necklace? Could there be two necklaces like the one he gave Lily? "I'm getting confused here, wait…"

"I love you." Lily spoke from her heart.

"I love you too." Jesse tipped her head up and pressed his lips to her. She gasped a moment as his hand caressed the side of her face, and they beamed to each other in love.

"I brought you home." She whispered under her breath. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow in school."

"As will I…" Jesse answered her. "Wait till we tell Miley I dreamed she was Hannah Montana." He was already chuckling over it.

"Yeah," Lily rolled her eyes. "She'll freak…" She realized a truth she could never tell.

"Love you." Jesse kissed her again and opened the door to slip out. As he stepped out, Miley had squirreled herself around the back of the vehicle and in through the other back door of the limo. For all intents and purposes, Miley had avoided being seen, and from Jesse's perspective, he had just been dropped off by his girlfriend and Miley Stewart was no where to be seen. He waved to Lily through the tinted window as the chauffeur pulled away. Watching his love drive away, Jesse turned to the large two-story Mediterranean manor that was his home. The front walkway took him under an arch to a small garden filling the small veranda before the front door. He unlocked and locked back again the left side of the double doors into the foyer. He gazed up to the kitchen in the back where his mother was standing in her robe sipping her evening hot chocolate. She was trying to quit drinking coffee.

"How was the concert, baby…" She asked him in her Manchester accent. A recording agent from London to New York then Nashville and now Malibu, she was better off than many single mothers.

"It was better than I thought!" Jesse lit up.

"That's good." He leaned over and kissed him. "Did you get your interview with Hannah…" She turned to pick up her drink ready to talk to her son and instead watched him rushing up to his room without her, listening instead to him pounding away over her head. There were noises of his shoes hitting the floor and then the toilet seat being dropped. His clothes would be littering the floor from the bathroom to his room in seconds.

Slipping into his nightly rituals, Jesse hung his jacket on a coat rack near his bedroom door to empty his pockets of money, items of interest and other junk. He had found the Bicentennial quarter in change from the soda machine at school. Noticing his tape recorder had recorded to the end, he rewound it and slipped into his bathroom to brush his teeth. Pulling off his Hannah shirt, he tossed it over his computer chair and prepared his toothbrush, but first, he stopped his recorder as far as it had rewound and pushed PLAY before returning to the bathroom.

"….have a real name?" His voice came from the device.

"Why would you ask that?" Hannah's voice responded from the tape.

"Oh… because some stars like Sting or Cher tend to change their names or like you, Lily Trus…." There was background noise on the tape then a shrill scream. "Miley?????!!!!!" His voice cried out from the device. The recording finally got his attention. A toothbrush hanging from his mouth, he rushed to his desk to focus on the tape. It hadn't been a dream; it had been real!! All at once, everything Lily had told him in the limo turned out to be an obvious fabrication, but why would Lily lie to him about it? Was it all to cover up for Miley? Where was Miley during the whole limo ride? On the tape, he heard himself hitting the floor in the dressing room and realized for the first time he was hearing them talking about stuff he'd never heard during the time he was out cold. He rubbed the back of his head wondering if Lily had knocked him cold when he wasn't watching.

"Oh my god!!! He thought I was Hannah?" Lily's voice on the tape was upset.

"I did. I really did…" Jesse was getting excited to realize his recorder had been left running to bust this massive secret wide open for him.

"Lily, he pulled my wig off! He knows I'm Hannah. He's the worst possible person to have figured it out. That creep's going to tell everyone in school!"

"What?" Jesse realized how she thought of him.

"Hey, that creep's my boyfriend!" At least, Lily's voice from the tape revealed she still loved him

"What am I going to do? My secret is out." Miley answered again from the machine.

"Wait a second…." Lily replied on the tape. There was a brief thud of something hitting the floor and the rustling noise of his recorder being handled. "Uhhh…. I got nothing…" Lily's voice replied before the sound of a door opening and the vague voice of another person from the other side of the room.

"He jerked my wig off!" Miley's voice was more than angry. She was ticked off. "He thought Lily was Hannah Montana!!!"

"Well, I never expected that outcome!" That was the voice of Miley's father!!! Was he involved in this too?

"What kind of magic trick do you have to fix this? I hope it involves hypnotism cause that's the only thing that's going to work!!" Miley screamed from the recording. Jesse hit REWIND to hear the whole thing again.

"….he pulled my wig off! He knows I'm Hannah. He's the worst possible person to have figured it out. That creep's going to tell everyone in school!"

Jesse hit REWIND again.

"….he pulled my wig off! He knows I'm Hannah. He's the worst possible person to have figured it out. That creep's going to tell everyone in school!"

He hit it again.

"….he pulled my wig off! He knows I'm Hannah. He's the worst possible person to have figured it out. That creep's going to tell everyone in school!"

He hit REWIND again and again and again….

"….Worst possible person to have figured it out. ….Worst possible person to have figured it out. ….Worst possible person to have figured it out….."

Clad in his underwear and t-shirt, Jesse dropped to the floor and sat against his chest of drawers listing to his tape. His ego was crushed, his personality deflated. This was the biggest thing in the world to come to him, and he didn't know what to do with it. If he sold it to the tabloids, it would ruin Miley, and Lily would never have another thing to do with him. She had helped Miley cover it up. The tape could make him rich beyond his means, but if he went through with it, he'd lose the first girl he had every loved, but did he want to stay with a girl who had lied to him for her best friend? What should he do? He rewound the tape over and over, searching for an answer to his dilemma...

"….Worst possible person," Miley's voice repeated from his tape recorder. "….Worst possible person, ….Worst possible person, ….Worst possible person," He listened to it over and over and over and over again….

END


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